By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 14/04/2026This useful word comes to us from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term in the 1960s while he was investigating a seeming paradox: how was it that we modern people had mastered so many of the useful arts and sciences, and yet we seemed no happier than the ancients? 25/ 191
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 14/04/2026How could we make so much progress and so little progress in being happy? In his work Csikszentmihalyi found people reported happiness while doing difficult things well - when your "body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." 26/ 192
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 14/04/2026As Derek Thompson says, the word "flow" implies an effortlessness, but really, it's the *effort* - just enough, not too much - that defines flow-states. We aren't happiest in a frictionless world, but rather, in a world of "achievable challenges": www.derekthompson.org/p/how-zombie... 27/derekthompson.orgHow ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over CultureOr: If you're so smart, why aren't you happier? 1122